The alleged mobile home scam by the park girl in La Feria has been running rampant for a over a year according to reports.
Dozens of criminal complaints not only from customers but from manufacturers and suppliers led to eight felony arrest warrants for Jo Leigh Ares, resulting in her arrest Wednesday evening.
Cameron County Precinct 7 Constable Cesar Diaz says the scope of the scam is massive and hopes to have Ares in the valley soon to have her face charges.
But Diaz says the extradition process is not going as fast as he would like
“It’s going a bit slow,” sad Diaz. “But all law enforcement agencies are working together to bring here.”
As if times aren't hard enough, a lot of fraudulent companies are in search of desperate homeowners to prey upon and take what little bit of money they have left says La Feria Police Chief Don Garcia.
“They have been swindled out of so much money,” said Chief Garcia. “Promised so many things and nothing has happened.”
Chief Garcia has numerous cases on file in which The Park Girls' customers have purchased mobile homes but they claim after Ares received payment, she failed to live up to her end of the deal.
Ricardo Cavazos is one of those disgruntled customers.
He met us outside precinct 7 constable's office.
Cavazos says his son paid $15,000.00 for a mobile home.
Two months later, he hasn't heard from Ares and now his newly married son has no place to live.
After more than of month of investigating, Action 4 News has uncovered even more debt owed by Ares.
Matt's building materials in Pharr has a pending lawsuit against her and The Park Girl Sales totaling thousands of dollars.
But they chose not to comment about specifics in the case.
Many of Ares' customers who turned to Action 4 News for help, say when they made payments to her for their homes they did not receive receipts.
They fear they won't get credit for paying and face repossession.
We have called on The Texas Attorney General's office to address these issues.
We're waiting for their response.
TV Station Profiles & Public Inspection Files forKGBT